The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2011)

Director:

Morgan Spurlock

Writers:

Morgan Spurlock
Jeremy Chilnick

Release Date:

24 August 2011 (Iceland)

Genre:

Documentary | Comedy

Tagline:

He's not selling out, he's buying in.

Plot:

A documentary about branding, advertising and product placement that is financed and made possible by brands, advertising and product placement. |

Plot Keywords:

Advertising | Product Placement | Movie In Title

Awards:

3 nominations

Cast

J.J. Abrams	...	Himself
Peter Berg	...	Himself
Paul Brennan	...	Himself
Noam Chomsky	...	Himself
Jimmy Kimmel	...	Himself
Rick Kurnit	...	Himself
Mark Crispin Miller	...	Himself
Ralph Nader	...	Himself
Brett Ratner	...	Himself
Antonio Reid	...	Himself
Morgan Spurlock	...	Himself
Quentin Tarantino	...	Himself
Donald Trump	...	Himself
John Wells	...	Himself

Directed by
Morgan Spurlock

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Jeremy Chilnick
Morgan Spurlock

Produced by
Keith Calder	....	producer
Jeremy Chilnick	....	producer
Elyssa Hess	....	associate producer
Eliza Hindmarch	....	consulting producer
Abbie Hurewitz	....	producer
Erika Knowles	....	associate producer
Jonathan McHugh	....	co-producer
Morgan Spurlock	....	executive producer
Morgan Spurlock	....	producer
Sebastian Weinberg	....	associate producer
Jessica Wu	....	producer

Original Music by
Jon Spurney

Cinematography by
Daniel Marracino

Film Editing by
Tom Vogt

Production Management
Michelle Blumenschine	....	production manager

Sound Department
Cole Chamberlain	....	boom operator
Abe Dolinger	....	boom operator
Rusty Dunn	....	sound effects editor
Tim Dutton	....	sound mixer
Brian Fish	....	sound mixer
Ethan Goldberger	....	sound mixer
Lewis Goldstein	....	sound re-recording mixer
Lewis Goldstein	....	supervising sound editor
Paul Graff	....	sound mixer
Dan Korintus	....	dialogue editor
Roy Marasigan	....	boom operator
Lucas C. Plouviez	....	sound mixer
Chris Ripper	....	sound mixer
Tom Ryan	....	adr recordist
Tom Ryan	....	assistant sound editor
George E. Simpson Jr.	....	sound mixer
Wen Hsuan Tseng	....	apprentice sound editor

Visual Effects by
Leslie Chung	....	digital compositor
Lewis Kofsky	....	visual effects producer
Jess Mireau	....	motion graphics artist
Thomas Panayiotou	....	visual effects artist

Camera and Electrical Department
Tiffany Armour-Tejada	....	digital imaging technician utility
Dave Ellis	....	Steadicam operator
Billy Green	....	additional steadicam operator
James King	....	assistant camera
James King	....	electrician
Jermaine Love	....	camera operator
Alexander Perlman	....	additional camera operator
Gabe Kolodny	....	digital imaging technician (uncredited)

Animation Department
Patrick Hosmer	....	animator

Editorial Department
Jason Battle	....	editing intern
Brian Boyd	....	colorist
Marrian Cho	....	additional editor
Brian Nils Johnson	....	assistant editor
Brian Reali	....	digital intermediate producer

Music Department
Jonathan McHugh	....	music supervisor
Jonathan Zalben	....	associate music supervisor

Other crew
Max D. Baumgarten	....	researcher
Lisa Clark	....	production assistant: DC segments
Elissa Cohn	....	production assistant
Matt Cross	....	location scout
Kaitlin Cunniff	....	assistant to Jeremy Chilnick
Colleen Goodhue	....	production assistant
Jennifer Jones	....	assistant to Morgan Spurlock
Jeremy Kaufman	....	researcher
David Magdael	....	publicist
Emmanuel Moran	....	production secretary
Justin Oberman	....	production assistant
Kira Randolph	....	assistant to Morgan Spurlock
Ricki Reisner	....	production assistant
Jennalee Rhodes	....	production assistant
Sara Schweizer	....	production secretary
Karen Segall	....	production legal
Jack Tarlton	....	production assistant
Alex Tepper	....	production assistant

Production Companies

• Snoot Entertainment
• Warrior Poets

Distributors

• Sony Pictures Classics (2011) (USA) (theatrical)
• Stage 6 Films (2011) (USA) (all media)
• Golden Village Pictures (2011) (Singapore) (theatrical)
• Sea Movies (2011) (worldwide) (theatrical) (ship)
• Emylia (2012) (France) (DVD)
• Madman Entertainment (2011) (Australia) (all media)
• Mongrel Media (2011) (Canada) (DVD)
• Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (2011) (USA) (DVD)
• Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (2011) (USA) (DVD) (Blu-ray)
• Turbine Medien GmbH (2013) (Germany) (DVD)

Other Companies

• Artists' Addiction Records  soundtrack
• Dolby Laboratories  sound mix
• Sixteen19  post production services

Also Known As:

"POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold" - USA (complete title)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for some language and sexual material

Runtime:

90 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

USA:PG-13 (certificate #46706) | Ireland:12A | Singapore:PG13

Company:

Snoot Entertainment

Trivia:

The soundtrack includes Moby's "Run On" from the album "Play", the first album ever to have all its tracks licensed for use in movies, TV shows and commercials.

Movie Connections:

References Toy Story (1995)

Soundtrack:

Carmen Suite No. 2

Commits the greatest sin in cinema - it's boring.

The film follows Spurlock as he seeks out funding for the movie, which is ostensibly about product placement. However, the plot gets dull as we already know the ending, that the movie gets funding and gets made. There is no arc, no interesting advances. And talking to industry hired guns (i.e. analysts and advertising folks) gets droll and repetitive. So, the movie was simply dull and uninteresting after a while.

I had hoped that, like most documentaries where the star is the producer/director, there would be two concurrent story lines running throughout - one with the contrived plot of finding sponsors, the other with a great inner-workings of the beast sort of thing where we learn something about product placement. Instead we are shown a dozen 3-second product placement clips and told that it's everpresent. This is not new information to anyone with a working brain stem. We are not educated on the topic. It's a real shame. I'll give an example of this done correctly - most any Michael Moore film. There's the "plot" of Moore going here, doing that. But there's also an entire portion of the film where you learn a lot about the topic of the film. Be it gun control, or health care, you come away with more knowledge and certainly at least a rudimentary understanding of the broad system at work. This movie, you know nothing more than you went in with, other than you can monitor someone's brain with an fMRI machine whilst they watch movie trailers.

A serious miss, and a serious missed opportunity for Spurlock. This could have been fantastic, but his personal role in the movie took over and destroyed the entire concept. Pass.